today on r t an investigation into the attack on benghazi gets political lawmakers on the hill grilled state department officials about how the attack happened and why the u.s. wasn't more prepared ahead we'll sort through what we now know is misinformation. and if the u.s. was a boa constrictor you can bet that iran would be its prey now president obama is tightening sanctions yet again on the so-called rogue nation trying to squeeze out the country's nuclear program but who are these sanctions really hurting and more importantly who might they be helping. plus florida's department of corrections is

getting ready to execute an elderly prisoner that has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia does this violate the u.s. constitution we will question more. is wednesday october tenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching r.t. let's begin this evening on capitol hill where the first congressional hearing on those attacks in benghazi libya just wrapped up the house oversight and government reform committee held a hearing questioning top officials with the state department and embassy security about the situation on the ground there u.s. security officer eric nordstrom said he personally sent two cables to the u.s. state department asking for increased security while he was stationed in libya here he is speaking at the hearing a little earlier today. i had not seen an attack of such ferocity and intensity

previously in libya nor in my time with the diplomatic security service i'm concerned that this attack signals a new security reality. now many more details about what happened that evening of september eleventh in benghazi emerged today with a focus on who knew what when and why certain decisions regarding security in libya were made the bottom line here the claims that the attacks that killed ambassador chris stevens were a result of a protest gone iran are false the u.s. state department now says there was no protest what happened on the night of september eleventh had nothing to do with a controversial offensive video called the innocence of muslims and everything to do with a group of armed men who came into the compound where the benghazi consulate was based and after being unable to get to ambassador stevens directly all they saw at the building on fire and master stevens most likely died of smoke inhalation so we want to talk more about the changing story and also the developing investigation

with retired cia officer ray mcgovern and our correspondent liz wahl and liz let me start with you because you just got back here i did literally minutes ago from the hearings i just tell us a little bit about what you heard today lawmakers today basically demanding answers on the libya attacks congress question some key witnesses about the security failures in benghazi right off the bat we have the chairman of this committee representative darrell issa saying this is not about a youtube video this is not about a video that went viral that made fun of the prophet mohammad that this was in fact premeditated he called them up predictable terrorist attacks and he really hailed eric nordstrom for coming forward and helping him as a whistleblower for coming forward with some of the information where he made repeated requests saying that the suit situation because he was there on the ground in benghazi saying that the so which the situation here is very volatile and he

felt that his safety and that of the ambassador and his colleagues there were in grave danger and he made repeated attempts to. get increased security and for some reason those requests. were ignored right talk about this two things here first of all why is this information that's just coming out right now in terms of the situation on the ground regarding security and number two how could some of those requests been ignored well this is a political carnival this is represented trying to make political points now they're trying to get hillary clinton for a lack of understanding what security is needed that's why they should try to get hillary clinton. they should get hillary clinton because they're what she and others did in libya i mean one of the one of the congressman said well you know do are there more or less al-qaeda in libya since we. have

a country well there are far more said the witnesses well how many shoulder fired and he aircraft missiles are in their hands and when i heard the answer ten i said well that's not many ten to twenty thousand oh my gosh so you know the problem really here is not whether the state department heard in first saying that it had to do with the with the with video i mean after all that's what happened cairo the problem here is not getting to the bottom of the thing and the bottom of the thing is the same congressman ok they. the they forgot their constitutional duty insisting that before we went to war in libya that there'd be a congressional vote they ducked that and the result is that the people like hillary clinton and others think they couldn't you know fix things by sending bombers over a country the country is a mess and the militias are all over the place they're not really directed by any point there are al qaida out there but you know we have tried to think of defending

two hundred eighty four diplomatic representations of the us abroad i mean you'd have to wind down the the war in afghanistan to do to get them enough marines to go in so what did they do that contractors they get people from that the libyan nationals and you can't really depend on them so the root causes were completely missed always so what was the were the trees and nobody ever ever looks at the forest and i think that's a really interesting point liz while you were there at the hearing today i'm just wondering if you were able to sort of talk to any of these. state department officials after the hearing or during the breaks and what they had to say after the hearing i was able to talk to mr nordstrom he is the security officer there for the u.s. state department i was on the ground and really saw firsthand how volatile the situation is over there in libya unfortunately he wasn't able to go on the record with us

because you know with these things they have to get prior and prior approval hopefully he can come on and talk about it another time with us later on in the show but he is being hailed by some members of congress as a as a whistleblower because if it weren't for him we wouldn't have known you know that there were warning signs ahead of time and that this was not just a result of this you tube video contrary to what was said in the media and by the state department well let me ask you i mean. you know this has happened months ago now and the timeline of exactly what happened has changed immensely i mean with facts coming out that were contradicting what was being said before as a former cia officer i mean were you kind of keen into some of these a holes in the story from day one well you know the intelligence community is under the gun in situations like this when there's not enough information on what actually happened

and people like or ambassador to the u.n. says i need to know right now and they give their best guess and their best guess was wrong and they made very clear this is our best guess in this political arena and so did she so look you're talking about master susan rice what you're at on all the sunday talk shows yeah on september sixteenth five days after these attacks as far as i know appointment information she was very careful ok and then later she has a website where the second the intelligence community now has come up with if it is the there was a terrorist attack and so the republican leadership there and especially congressman trying to make a lot of the fact that they were wrong and they're saying that you would trying to deliberately deceive us and why haven't you mentioned terrorists you don't like the word terrorists are you afraid to madrid and why did the embassy in cairo apologize you know it's all contrived and if it were a month before the election you know people harder to understand i was about to say

you called it i think a political festival of all or field a carnival of course and we can't ignore the fact that we're four weeks away less now from the election and this is a divided time it has been an extremely divided congress so i want to just want to play a little part from today's hearing that sort of demonstrates illustrates sort of the tension that remains there. requests for extensions of more security by the mission in libya however appear to have often been rejected or even more deliberately officials in washington told diplomats in libya not even to make them though the chairman claims we are pursuing this investigation want to quote bipartisan basis that is simply not been the case so here you have the republican chairman their allies and then you have the ranking member allies are coming the chairman basically saying and echoing what we've been hearing from the g.o.p. bad obama administration you messed up and then you hear from congressman cummings

he sort of went into details of the rules that were broken he says documents were withheld from the rest of the committee by republicans on the committee he said you know interview testimony was not shared with them he said that they were invited to go on this fact finding mission let me ask you as i mean did you get the sense that politics was definitely at play here today i mean absolutely you saw where we just heard the chairman there really going after the administration for basically all these security failures you had a lot of people coming out and saying you know what this is this is big knowledge that this has been politicized and we had members of congress coming out saying that this is not something that should be politicized where twenty seven days before the election that this is a bipartisan issue and this is our country first but as you know we're twenty seven days before an election so i it's not exactly that exactly will not be what i mean dude does politics you know being at play get in the way of cia investigations.

well not necessarily i think my former colleagues do a creditable job in sorting out the facts and giving them up to political supervisors but you know what they do with them is that what you saw today in this in this corner of all what never comes out is the policy you know why these people hate us you know and when we have enclaves such as we haven't baghdad now an incredible embassy cost almost a billion dollars you know it's just a matter of time before some rockets are going to land there and then who's going to be congressman each who's going to be open arms saying why didn't we know about that and it's he and his colleagues that have deprived the state department of millions and millions of dollars to defend these things not that the defend the blow at all i mean the reason they hate us is because what we've done what we've done in iraq and afghanistan and libya and now in syria and that's not going to stop but they're going to keep aging is there actually there was one congressman

that really did. per try a unique point of view that is congressman dennis q senator and i want to read a part of his testimony today that kind of goes along with what you're saying he says you would think that after ten years in iraq and eleven years in afghanistan the united states would have learned the consequences of interventionism you would think that after trillions have been wasted on failed attempts at democracy building abroad while our infrastructure crumbles at home congress and the administration would reexamined their priorities so really right along the lines of what you're saying here is this is not a discussion of not enough security personnel on the ground not enough money being devoted to this is a much larger problem it is indeed it's a much larger problem because it's a worldwide problem and you know if we want people not to hate us then we have to behave in such a way that we don't give them these kinds of grievances to play on even dick cheney after we got out of. office slips and said among the grievances that the arab. and

muslims have is our close support for the state of israel can you imagine anything about the speechwriter to check that out so you know that's one of the things the other thing is our support for people like the saudi dictatorship and so forth like that and in our history of supporting people like mubarak and and even could see in this list stays so again i think it's a really important point that these are not this is not the information that's coming out in investigations like the one we saw today missing probably some of the larger points here great point certainly we're tired cia officer raymond mcgovern and of course r.t. correspondent liz wahl who just returned from that hearing on the health things guys thank you chris. well on tuesday president obama signed an executive order implementing new tougher sanctions on iran and the goal is to increase pressure on tehran to halt its nuclear program a program which officials there say is for peaceful purposes there's asians were

laid out in legislation which passed easily in both the u.s. senate and the house of representatives a few months ago and let's not forget there have already been thanks and in a report published last week un secretary-general ban ki moon laid out exactly who those sanctions have been impacting the most those sanctions he said have had a significant effect on the general population including an escalation in inflation a rise in commodities and energy costs and increase in the rate of unemployment and a shortage of necessary items and that includes medicine so we want to take a deeper look into the u.s. government iran policy and help me do that i'm joined now by jim aviv policy director for the national iranian american council jamal connect the dots for me how does hitting the iranian people directly lead to an invention will halt iran's nuclear program it doesn't is the short answer but this is something that is supposedly an unintended effect of the sanctions the people who write these bills

the president who signs them largely say we don't want to hurt ordinary iranians this is designed to hurt the running government but you do have a small number of lawmakers a growing number of lawmakers and pundits on the outside who are starting to come clean and say actually this is great when we see that ordinary people are suffering in the wrong when we see the currency devaluation that's hurting the middle class and the reason they say this is great is because the sentients aren't designed to address the nuclear issue the same sions are designed to topple the iranian government and they think that. toppling the iranian government starts with engineering suffering among the people and that somehow the u.s. is going to convince people to basically you know take up arms or rise up and. the government because of these sanctions is that what you think will happen i mean when you have a country that's starving that's out of work certainly they're going to get angry the question is who will they direct that anger towards no this isn't going to work we already we've seen the democracy movement inside of iran in two thousand and

nine this was a movement based on food riots and suffering these were actually largely middle class iranians who had the ability to to sort of funnel their attention towards demanding civil liberties demanding their voting rights and things like that but if you look what happened in the arab spring jamal i mean a lot of people say if you look at egypt if you look at tunisia that was based on people who are hungry people who could not you know sell their first and that's temples in the street and that did lead to the toppling of a government well look you may get a situation in iran where you have people who attempts to topple the government whether it's from the outside this group that has been delisted or you have this instability that's created but i would just say two things one your audience have been through a revolution iranians don't like this regime but they also understand the instability that comes from toppling a regime and then the second thing is that if you actually i mean if this strategy

actually worked out which i actually don't think that people want this strategy work out i think they want it to fail so that we can move to a war option but were this to actually pan out where there was some sort of instability that toppled the iranian government this is is not how you produce a democracy this is not how a democratic government is created instead what we should not have anyone been saying that they're hopeful that democracy will happen in iran. you know i don't know if they thought about that for i think a lot of people have claimed that's what they want to see but if they actually want to see that they would listen to the people inside of iran who also want democracy and are saying these sanctions are devastating to their cause yeah absolutely you hear just regular nonpolitical. business owners who just want to get a loan to fund their business and they can't get any money from the outside again as you say some people say this is exactly the goal. but really a whole lot going on here and we can't undermine the fact yes this is all happening

under president obama on monday though we heard governor mitt romney give a speech in which he outlined his policy and he made very clear that if he becomes president his policies would be even more tough let's take a listen to what he said. i will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on iran and will keg and will tighten the sanctions we currently have restored the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the eastern mediterranean and the gulf and i'll work with israel to increase our military assistance and coordination for the sake of peace we must make clear to iran through actions not just words that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated so perhaps in all this is sort of holding in on what you just said that not just words but action but i'm curious what you think i mean what's the big difference between president obama and governor romney when it comes to iran policy. if you listen to what the governor just said this is largely what the obama administration is already doing i mean he

won't hesitate to sanctions when has this administration has appeared to annex ancient's every three weeks you have new sanctions coming online i think really what separates these two is that the obama administration has pledged to use diplomacy the diplomacy they say is the way out of this standoff. with governor romney he has said the same thing but there seems to be a demonization of the diplomatic option and more of this sort of foreshadowing of a regime change at any cost imposed by the united states that would likely take place via military action now there are critics of this method of sanctions and a lot of times they're pointing to historic examples there pointing for example to iraq they say the sanctions didn't take food off saddam hussein's table they didn't make his family live any less large than they did they point to countries like burma zimbabwe you know top leaders there were not directly impacted by sanctions

only the people are but you know why then is there so much support for this we talked about this legislation passing i think back in august in the house that vote was four hundred twenty one to six for further sanctions so why. i is there's so much support for this method you know it seems like the only thing that washington in congress is able to do is pass the sections and the reason is that you know you have very powerful groups lobbying for these for these sanctions you have groups like a pac in the united against nuclear iran and foundation for defense of democracies and because there is not a very strong opposition who is saying hold on a second we've done the same since we've reached this inflection point there needs to be a real investment in diplomacy if we don't want this to go to war without that counter that counter voice members of congress people in the senate they all seem to think that this is a decision of you know all we can do you're on is more sanctions until the time

runs out and we have to go to war. what is the impact we talk about the impact on the iranian people you know who have nothing to do with you know the policies of their governorship but what will be the eventual impact if this continues on the u.s. in terms of you know geopolitics well a long term the best way out of this is a negotiated agreement that also create space inside of iran so that ordinary people can can decide their own destiny for themselves for the united states if we continue to do this we're looking at the same trajectory we had with saddam where ordinary people were punished civil society completely closed up you had massive humanitarian suffering and in the end a dictatorship was actually entrenched not removed and eventually united states ended up in this disastrous military fiasco and that's the direction we're heading unless we can figure out how to change course yeah certainly a very interesting and i think you're right it's a very interesting at a time when this country is so divided that one of the few things they can sort of rally together on is hurting the people of iran

a very interesting thanks as always for being on the show jamal is the policy director of the national iranian american council. well in just a few days the state of florida is expected to execute a sixty four year old man who has been diagnosed by mental health experts as a paranoid schizophrenic john erol ferguson believes that he is the quote prince of god and that he can speak with his dead father ferguson is scheduled for a lethal injection as the result of his role in one nine hundred seventy seven mass murder in miami dade county and despite being part of a group that killed six people execution style ferguson has a legal team arguing that his execution would be cruel and unusual punishment this is all outlined in a new article for truth written by journalist ron your college or new joins me now from fairfax virginia to break this all down to give us the nuts and bolts of this story here. well as you said john ferguson has been diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic and florida planning on executing him next week his

lawyers are arguing the basis lawyers are pointing to two supreme court cases that have basically prohibited the execution of the mentally ill if they don't understand the rationale behind their execution. john ferguson's case lawyers arguing that that he's not mentally ill in fact that they're saying that he's speaking of mental illness. now the problem of that is that in the past florida own court appointed psychiatrist have not only diagnosed ferguson as a paranoid get this chronic but before the prime in question was committed and i think seventy seven john ferguson was in the care of florida's mental health facility and court appointed psychiatrist basically were warning the court they were saying do not release this man you're not only a paranoid schizophrenic he has no understanding whatsoever of the difference between right and wrong and he's dangerous to both themselves and others. the state

didn't the state didn't do that by state nor did and they were least on target than a nine hundred seventy six and less than a year later is when he committed these crimes. and over the last four decades courts when psychiatrists have basically changed their tune if it's a high time like during the trial it was the first time that psychologists were saying ok maybe you're faking his mental illness because it was a high stakes trial right is a very patient less crime but how can you be faking a mental illness i mean this is not something that's been you know investigated for the last month this has been like you said nearly four decades. you know of people mental health experts going in talking to this man evaluating them well you're right they're they're actually the man who wrote literally wrote the book about taking. mental illness that what they call a lingering he actually came and examined john ferguson in person did

a comprehensive examination and his conclusion was that there this man is in no way making of mental illness. if that's what the prosecution's arguing and it's it's kind of outrageous deservedly because this man isn't he's almost borderline mentally retarded and to say that he's been faking is to say that for the past four decades he's been able to. be you know. throughout the state of florida a lot of people would look at this case and they say you know what despite his mental state ferguson has been convicted of killing people. what do you think i mean would it true vision of justice be putting him to death or letting him live what was the promise of the supreme court is when it is out and in and in in past cases that when it comes to someone's understanding of why they're being put to death it's really important they understand that it's because of a crime he committed that's the whole point and purpose of our justice system right is what we call retrograde of justice so it's somebody like john perkins that

thinks that they're being put to death in his case he believes it's a conspiracy by the state because he's the prince of god and the state wants to kill him right so he doesn't believe it has anything to do with his crimes in the whole purpose of killing him doesn't make any sense. for those at least to believe in the death penalty is a way to deter others from doing it so that's the problem with with that right now today is the world day against the death penalty it's another reason we wanted to bring this story to our audience talk a little bit all fergusson in the context of other death penalty cases in the united states well it's interesting because over the summer there were several other pieces of individuals who were either mentally ill or were mentally disabled who in texas i believe there were several in georgia there was one chance that we. he was mentally stable and despite multiple supreme court rulings saying that it's unconstitutional to put them under who is mentally disabled or mentally ill deeds

around the country have been arguing for it they've been trying to go against the advice of mental health professionals they've been trying to come up with their own processes for making sure that if you are still put to death and it's really a shame because these people. are not in their right mind and they don't understand what's happening around them and i mean it's morally and worley and you know it's just morally wrong in my opinion many other people i think it's really interesting when you talk about some of these cases there are rules in place but so often wrong as we're seeing here and you know as we saw in another case these rules are often broken just last week we heard about a case in and also in florida involving a thirteen year old being tried as an adult things christian fernandez he's charged with killing his two year old half brother he was twelve at the time of david's death and he will be prosecuted as an adult why do we have rules if

they can just be broken well i think the problem is that we as a society in america we have been talib a punishment where. you know there is no we don't want to understand why a crime was committed we don't want to understand the reasons that led up to it and this is not to justify crimes or murders or heinous acts like what john ferguson did but it's just to say that they're it's just our entire process is that you know this process we're frenchman is really more of like our bench. than anything else and also we do have rules in place but most cases i mean the. prosecution you know prosecutors around the country and judges around the country are often on the side of what they'll say is the victim so they want these people to be punished and a lot of times they come up with ways to flout the roles or to not follow them at all and you know that's an issue might come to the death penalty specifically if it

does all these the bin that you can't take back when you kill somebody they're gone right so that's why it's really important that these will be followed so that we give people due process and we treat them the way they deserve to be treated and certainly a lot of questions regarding that case of course most people remember troy davis just back to the ferguson case for one second rung i mean october sixteenth is the date that he's scheduled to be put to death is there anything else that could happen between now and then that would prevent it yet so his prosecute i'm sorry that is the defense team has. and is now doing a couple different things they have appealed the finding by a commission that governor rick scott put together which said that the band that part of it is competent for execution they don't appeal that decision and yesterday and continuing today there there's a competency hearing basically an evidentiary hearing to put or that sort of all the mental health records and you. and a judge will basically decide whether be.